Early life

Nora Louise Kuzma was born in Steubenville, Ohio. Her stage name is said to be in tribute to Katharine Hepburn's character Tracy Lord from The Philadelphia Story[3] or from the first name of her high school best friend Traci; and the last name of her favorite actor from Hawaii Five-O, Jack Lord. At twelve she fled from her abusive, alcoholic father to Lawndale, California, with her mother and three sisters.[4] In 1983 she began Redondo Union High School; had an abortion which she paid for by herself; underwent a nervous breakdown; and ran away from home. While living with her mother's ex-boyfriend, who posed as her stepfather, she used a friend's birth certificate to obtain a driver's license indicating that she was twenty-two years of age, and faked her way into the porn industry at the age of fifteen. She started in the porn industry with Jim South at the World Modeling Agency in Sherman Oaks, while assuming the name Kristie Elizabeth Nussman.[4]

Shortly after, she was modeling for widely distributed adult magazines, most notably Penthouse, in the same September 1984 issue that exposed Miss America 1984, Vanessa Williams. She quickly ventured into adult movies. Her first movie was What Gets Me Hot! followed by Those Young Girls and Talk Dirty To Me Part III, all made in the first half of 1984. Lords' youthful appearance and enthusiastic sexual performances propelled her to stardom. By the time she was 18, Lords had appeared in 100 adult films. Lords argued in her autobiography, however, that approximately 80 of those films were composed from leftover and re-edited footage from the original 20 films that were shot.[5]

In May 1986, authorities discovered she was underage while making movies and they arrested her, as well as the owners of her movie agency and X-citement Video, Inc. (See United States v. X-Citement Video.) The ensuing prosecution against the agencies cost the pornographic film and distribution industry millions of dollars as they were obliged by law to remove hundreds of thousands of her videotapes, films and magazines from store shelves to avoid the risk of prosecution for trafficking child pornography. In her book, Lords suggested hypocrisy on the part of the movie producers and the news media, arguing that the porn industry actually got richer from the publicity of the scandal, even as they complained of losing a lot of money after destroying her illegal movies. Lords felt she was also exploited by the reporters, who used censored stills from her unlawful films. Lords herself was never charged with a crime, since as a minor she was unable to give informed consent to perform sex acts on film for money. Instead, the agents and producers who accepted her fake IDs were charged and people affiliated with the films in question experienced legal troubles for years. Eventually, the Justice Department was forced to drop all charges when it was revealed that the fake ID which Lords had used to dupe the pornographic film industry was a U.S. passport in the name of Traci Lords.

Like most starlets of the time, for Lords' appearances in X-rated movies she was paid a salary, and didn't own the rights of those films. According to her autobiography, she made $35,000 as total salary for all of those movies, including the $5,000 she received for her appearance in Penthouse. Most of this money was spent on rent and drugs. It also paid for a black Corvette that her boyfriend later totaled.

But for her last few films she and another much older boyfriend, Stewart Dell, formed the Traci Lords Company where her boyfriend produced the movies. Lord received a smaller salary but received also part of the rights of these movies.

Only one of these films, Traci, I Love You, was produced after her eighteenth birthday, making it the only one legally available in the United States. Later, after her arrest Lords sold her rights to this film for $100,000.

This has led to claims that it was Lords herself who tipped off the authorities to gain immunity from prosecution while profiting from the movie. No proof has ever surfaced to substantiate this claim.[5] Lords denies this notion in her autobiography, and claims that she was reluctant to sell the rights, since at that time she was trying to become a real actress and didn't want any older movie still available. Also, she wrote she knew nothing of people's real names or who produced which film and did not provide such information to the FBI. The FBI agents, "appeared annoyed" when she could not provide the information they wanted. She said that the agents claimed to have monitored her for three years.[5]

Government prosecutors declared that Lords was a victim of a manipulative industry, maintaining she was drugged and made to do non-consensual acts. But industry insiders, like Ron Jeremy, Ginger Lynn and Tom Byron, say they never saw her use drugs and that she was fully aware of her actions even if, as a minor, she could not legally consent. While Lords decries the pornographic film industry, she continues to use the stage name she gave herself as a minor, and ultimately made it her legal name. She wrote, "I chose to stop running from it. Instead, I won it, legally changing my name to Traci Elizabeth Lords. That's who I was, and that's who I was going to be."[5] Lords stated that she is not trying to hide from her past, telling Oprah Winfrey: "I found you can run but you cannot hide".[6]

A new beginning

Lords moved into mainstream films, and has appeared in a number of B-movies. At 18, Lords began studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, and soon after, starred in a remake of Roger Corman's cult favorite Not of This Earth. Then in 1990, she was added to the cast that included Johnny Depp, Ricki Lake, and Iggy Pop, in John Waters' Cry Baby, playing the role of Wanda Woodward. Other movies on her resume include Blade, Extramarital, Black Mask 2: City of Masks, and Chump Change. The latter won her a Best Actress Award at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival.

In addition to movies, Lords has also made many appearances in various TV shows, including Married... with Children, MacGyver, Highlander, Tales from the Crypt, Hercules, Gilmore Girls, and Will & Grace among others, along with recurring roles in Profiler, Roseanne, and Melrose Place. From late in 2000 to 2001, Lords appeared in the Francis Ford Coppola produced sci-fi series First Wave, playing Jordan Radcliffe, the newest member of a group called Raven Nation that combats extraterrestrial aliens.

In the 1990s, Lords began developing a career as a singer, performing vocals for Manic Street Preachers on the single "Little Baby Nothing", and also appearing in the music videos of other performers and groups. In 1995, Lords made her solo debut, in collaboration with Juno Reactor and Jesus Jones' Mike Edwards, called 1000 Fires. The Juno Reactor-produced first single "Control" proved a smash, reaching a peak of #2 on the Billboard Dance Charts. The song "Control" was featured in the 1995 movie adaptation of the game Mortal Kombat, which played as an instrumental. "Fallen Angel", the second single off the album, earned a lot of attention because one of its remixes ("Honeymoon Stitch Mix") was produced and remixed by Chad Smith and Dave Navarro. The video for "Fallen Angel" was directed by Stéphane Sednaoui, who also directed such high-profile videos as the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Give It Away", and Madonna's "Fever".

Lords returned to the music scene in 2004 with a new, independently-produced recording, the double A-side "Sunshine".

In 2003 she published her autobiography, Traci Lords: Underneath It All (ISBN 0-06-050820-5), which made the New York Times bestseller list. In December 2003, Lords wrote and directed a short film with Fox Searchlab entitled Sweet Pea, released and shown at film festivals in 2005. The film is loosely inspired by an experience recounted in her autobiography; a teenage girl finds herself overcome with doubt after being raped by her boyfriend.

Tributes

A punk rock band called Sloppy Seconds wrote a song called "Come back, Traci", which describes being a fan of Lords' underage appearances in pornography.

Lords contributed vocals to the Manic Street Preachers song "Little Baby Nothing," from the Welsh group's Generation Terrorists album in 1992, and released as a single in November of that year. The song is about the sexual exploitation of a woman, and Lords agreed to a duet with the band's singer/lead guitarist James Dean Bradfield after Kylie Minogue turned the song down. Bradfield said that "we needed somebody, a symbol, a person that could actually symbolize the lyrics and justify them to a certain degree. Traci was more than happy to do it. She saw the lyrics, and she had an immediate affinity with them. It was definitely easy to incorporate her personality into the lyrics. We just wanted a symbol for it, and I think she was a great symbol. She sounds like a female Joey Ramone to me." Lords said that "I listened to the tape and really identified with the character in the song...this young girl who's been exploited and abused by men all her life." In an interview some years later, she admitted to being distressed at the news of the disappearance and presumed suicide of Manics' guitarist/lyricist Richey Edwards.

A German based punk/metal band is named after the actress, though the spelling of her name has been changed to "Traceelords."

Mötley Crüe wrote about her on their 1987 Girls, Girls, Girls album. The song "All In The Name Of..." doesn't name her directly, but it is based on her underage porn career.

Sound clips of her moaning can be heard in the song "Stone Cold Bush" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Country singer Ronnie Mack recorded a 1985 single called "I Love Traci Lords", which includes a spoken introduction by her. She appears on the cover of the single.

A hard rock/metal band in the 80's, formed by Pantera's original lead singer (Terry Glaze) named themselves "Lord Tracy"

Spanish punk band The Killer Barbies recorded a song called Traci Lords.

Brooklyn's underground rapper Necro mentions her in his porn-themed song "Get On Your Knees".

Lords was, along with the late John Holmes, an inspiration for the character of Dirk Diggler in the film Boogie Nights.

Right after Lords was arrested for her underage appearances in porn films, late night talk show host David Letterman quipped in his monologue, "Anyone who thinks she is a minor never saw one of her movies."

The Kabalas entitled a song "Traci Lords Polka" on their Eye of Zohar album